Coming to Montreal on September 28th for
one special night, Rick Wakeman’s Grumpy Old Rock Star Tour combines
spellbinding piano music with sidesplitting jokes, and reveals insights into
his 50-plus-year career. Expect an evening of superb musicianship, featuring
music from YES, Rick’s own solo epics and early Bowie hits, plus fantastic
arrangements of Beatles’ tunes, and much, much more, interspersed with
knockabout (and sometimes bawdy!) typically British humour.

Professional musician, keyboard player, songwriter,
broadcaster and raconteur, Wakeman’s career started as a much-in-demand session
player, who performed on recordings by David Bowie, Elton John, Lou Reed, Al
Stewart and hundreds more artists. His big break came in 1971 when he joined
YES, who went on to become the most successful prog rock bands in the world,
but Wakeman has also always gone his own way outside the framework of that
group.

In the Seventies, he achieved
chart-topping success with solo albums such asJourney to the Centre of the Earth, The
Six Wives of HenryVIII and The Myths and Legends
of King Arthur and the Knights of the RoundTable, which
cumulatively sold over 10,000,000 copies in North America alone.

He has written several film scores,
among them to for a director Ken Russell (Lisztomania and Crimes
of Passion) and two ‘Harry Palmer’ movies starring Michael Caine (Bullet
to Beijing and Midnight in St. Petersburg), and in the UK, has built up an
impressive reputation as a witty guest and host on shows like Grumpy
Old Men, Countdown, Watchdog and the comedy
cabaret show Live at Jongleurs. His wickedly irreverent acceptance
speech when YES was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017, nearly
brought the house down!

That same year, he made British chart
history when his Piano Portraitsbecame
the first solo piano instrumental album to enter the UK’s Top 10 on release – a
feat he then repeated with last year’s Piano Odyssey. Both records feature tunes that have a
special connection with Rick’s personal musical journey and his subsequent
tours, in which he performs a selection of tracks accompanied by hilarious
memories and anecdotes.